How does it feel like to get into a franchise such as this one in 2024?

After playing so many open world games that were inspired by it, and abandoning them after a few hours, I guess Assassin's Creed II still manages to have a tight open world design and a compelling story of revenge, one that made me want to at least play to see where it goes.

The game can feel unresponsive at times with what you want to do (and it doesn't help that I was playing through Remote Play in an average connection), but if I were to compare it with a game from its time, it has more freedom to traversal than most. I can only think of inFamous being better in this aspect.

Combat sucks, though. It's janky, the character moves awkwardly, and there’s no real variety. The puzzles were equally bad - something out of a Flash game. But the open world structure is strong enough to compensate for some of the mechanics. It was fun as hell to parkour around Renaissance Italy, and the mission structure didn’t feel like it got in the way of it.

I've come to accept that open world games are the type of game I like to play the most, but the fatigue from them is real. I did get the Platinum but didn't bring myself to do absolutely everything it had available. But it's interesting to experience one of the earlier examples of the design that's became a standard in most of AAA games today: an interesting concept buried in bloat, that grew every year with each new game.

For now, I'll wait a while to try the next game in the Ezio saga.